The picture suggests to our latter day scientific imagination that God’s currents of power move as silently, as swiftly, as invisibly and mysteriously as the currents of electricity.  The painter meant to show that the work of creation was not a mechanical effort of the Almighty, but that with him a gesture, a word, even a thought, brings something into being.

The series of which this picture forms a part is painted in fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in the Pope’s palace of the Vatican, Rome.  To break up the monotony of the long plain surface he had to decorate, the painter divided the strip of space in the centre into nine compartments.  These are separated from each other by a painted architectural framework, so cunningly represented that it seems to project from the ceiling like a solid structure of beams.

Our illustration shows a portion of the simulated framework which incloses the picture.  On what appears to be a pedestal at each corner is a seated figure representing a statue.  One is a beautiful youth with a horn of plenty, and the other is a faun-like creature capering gayly.  The purpose of these figures is decorative, like those in the background of the Holy Family.

IX

JEREMIAH

Michelangelo’s decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling did not stop with the series of panels running along the flat space in the centre.  On either side, where the ceiling arches to meet the side walls, he painted a row of figures, which seem to be seated in sculptured niches.  There are twelve of these figures in all, and seven of them are Hebrew prophets.

The prophets were holy men of old, who walked with God, and carried his messages among men.  They were men of great courage and conviction, fearlessly denouncing the sins of their times.  Sometimes they were great reformers, bringing about by their preaching an improved condition of things.  Often their mission was to arouse hope in discouragement, to strengthen faith in a happier time to come.  They looked forward to a future day, when the Prince of Peace should reign in the earth.

Jeremiah was a prophet of Judah during the corrupt and troublous times in the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah.  He has been compared by a recent writer[22] to “a Puritan living in the age of the Stuarts, to a Huguenot living in the age of the Medici, or a Savonarola living in the age of Pope Alexander VI.”  He was born in Anathoth, a little village of Judaea, and being the son of a priest was consecrated to the priesthood from birth.

[Footnote 22:  Lyman Abbott in Hebrew Prophets and American Problems.]

He was still very young when it was borne in upon him that to be loyal to God he must stand forth and speak the truth more boldly than other priests were doing.  Shrinking from such a task, he besought God to spare him.  “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak:  for I am a child.”